I started when I was in my early forties which you might think it a bit too old but of course I was happy with this and after getting into things I was doing 5 ovens a day, and sometimes more, after 18 months of trading. That was when we were the cheapest oven cleaning company around and I was doing this many ovens because I had a target of £200 + VAT to get to. See my post of pricing which I’ll do soon.

These days we aren’t the cheapest positioning ourselves at the premium end and because of this we don’t have to do so many ovens to hit the target which is still the same, even though we often go over it for each of our vans. I haven’t cleaned many ovens over the last six months so I know if I go out now I am going to ache a bit but I know that I will soon get back into the swing of things again. So now I am 52 and things are still fine.

Our franchisees vary in age, our oldest is 64 and the youngest is 39, but that isn’t because our business model wouldn’t be suitable for younger people we obviously would love to have younger franchisees. I left the RAF when I was 35 and this would have been a good time for me to have considered a franchise such as oven cleaning but for some reason I thought the IT contract work would be more rewarding! Ah the benefit of hindsight:-).

Our employees tend to be younger and at one time two of them were 19, but they are mid twenties now having been with us a while. For older people the job is going to keep you fit and it is better to be active than sitting at home. I know the OvenClean franchisee in Chippenham sold his business as a resale when he was 71 a couple of years ago.

Our pilot franchisee – Simon Green in Berkshire – who is currently turning over about £1400 each week is the same age as me and is cleaning on average four ovens a day.

The number of ovens that you clean in a day is determined by your fitness which obviously will improve as you clean more ovens and your technique improves . It took me a while to learn some techniques to increase my speed of cleaning and I’d teach you those in our franchisee training. We teach you the techniques I have developed as part of our training and it is just a case of making it an ‘Expert Habit’ where you go through the process every time for each job to get the reward of adulation (from the customer) and money (again from the customer) and grow your business.